떠돌이 인생역정 같이 가보세
Let's go together on the vagabond life journey
외로운 당신의 친구 되겠소
We will be friends for you who are lonely

흥청망청 비틀비틀 요지경 세상

Extravagant, stumbling, kaleidoscopic world

발걸음도 가벼웁다 서커스 유랑단 헤이

The steps are light for the traveling circus. Hey!

Briefly about Crying Nut: Crying Nut is a band made up of five members: Park Yoon-sik (vocal), Lee Sang-Myeon (guitar), Lee Sang-Hyeok (drum), Han Kyeong-Rok (bass), Kim In-su (keyboard). The two Lees are twins. The band was formed in 1993, and got its first regular gig at Club Drug near Hong-Ik University in 1995 after an open audition. The band released its first album in 1998. It has six regular albums and a number of singles and movie soundtracks. While the band was generally popular, recording what ended up becoming the official Team Korea song for the 2002 World Cup brought their fame to a new level. The band had a four-year hiatus between 2002 and 2006 while four of the members were serving their military duty at the same time. The band's official website is here.

About this song: Circus Magic Traveling Troupe was the title song of Crying Nut's second album of the same name.

Translation note: The song contains a lot of cultural allusions that need full background to understand.

- In traditional Korea, the market was consisted of traveling merchants who would appear every five or seven days to set up shop. Very rudimentary circus troupe sometimes travels with the merchants. This persisted in rural Korea through 1960s and early 1970s, and still continues to a very small degree to this day.

- The "Eight Provinces" is an idiom that refers to Korea, as traditional Korea was made up of eight provinces.

- The reference to "bear" is designed to evoke Korean old saying, "The bear dances and the owner takes the money," which is used in a situation when someone went through a lot of effort that ended up benefiting someone else.

Separately, there was no good way to translate 흥청망청 비틀비틀 요지경 세상. Suggestions are welcome.

The Korean on Crying Nut: The current torch-bearer for Korean punk rock. Single-handedly revived both Korean rock and the indie band scene out of the dead zone between 1996 and 2000. Excellent adaptation of the punk rock spirit to Korean atmosphere to create a carefree, passionate and sometimes melancholy body of music. AWESOME live performers, never studio. Best songs combine mindless screaming, utter frivolity and unexpected sentimentality, like this one.

I think one of Crying Nut's most popular songs was the ridiculously huge hit off their first album, "말달리자", which I think has become a sort of 노래방 anthem and a great way to blow off steam (and kill vocal chords, from personal experience). That said, I don't know how I'd translate even the title while retaining the 느낌. "Run, horse, run!" just doesn't feel the same. Which, I guess goes to show how it's hard to translate poetics from language to language, because artistic use of words often depends as much on form as it does on meaning.

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About TK

The Korean is a Korean American living in Washington D.C. / Northern Virginia. He lived in Seoul until he was 16, then moved to Los Angeles area. The Korean refers to himself in the third person because he thinks it sounds cool.